Another Nicki fisk: “Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes”

Read it all here.

A sample:

In 2012, a deranged loon shot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. It was a tragedy in which 12 people were killed and 70 others injured. James Holmes fired 76 shots in the theater: six from a shotgun, 65 from a semi-automatic rifle, and five from a .40-caliber handgun. The shooting prompted the usual calls for more gun control, and Holmes this year was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after jurors failed to reach a unanimous decision over sentencing him to death.

In the aftermath of the shooting, and in an obvious effort to take advantage of an opportunity, the Brady Center and its attorneys brought a pro bono lawsuit on behalf of the parents of one of the victims Jessica Ghawi against Lucky Gunner – the company that sold Holmes ammunition.

They lost.

Further, they were ordered to pay $203,000 in legal fees for this frivolous lawsuit. They’re now crying that they don’t have the money, while at the same time absolving the Brady Center of responsibility for paying this bill, even though they instigated the suit.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I hurt for Lonnie and Sandy Phillips. I know what it’s like to lose a child, and it’s an agony I don’t wish on anyone. But at the same time, when your reaction to such a tragic loss is to work to relieve others of their rights, abuse the legal system in order to punish lawful citizens for engaging in legal business, and then whine about the legal consequences of your actions, you deserve a fisk.

The Phillips couple (he apparently a paid operations manager for the Brady bunch) took their self-righteous and deceptive complaint to HuffPo. TZP’s Nicki Kenyon gives it the fisking it deserves.

Read the rest at Nicki’s personal blog.

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This week’s TZP poll: You and gun rights

This week’s TZP poll asks, “What types of gun-rights activities are you personally involved with?”

Choose as many as apply and feel free to add your comments!

This poll will close at 6:00 p.m. CDT this Friday.

Since the only problem people reported with last week’s sample poll (thank you, beta testers) was trouble finding it while on mobile devices, I’ll put all new polls in a regular post. They can also be found in the left-hand sidebar for those who aren’t on mobile.

Remember that polls will open in a new tab or window.

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Buyers speak: Hear what they say about TZP custom Kershaw knives

We have just 29 of our TZP custom Kershaw spring-assist knives left and there’s no telling if we’ll continue to carry these after this batch is gone.

So time to hear what some of our knife buyers have to say about them. We asked a few of the earliest purchasers and got these testimonials:

Knives arrived sharp as advertised and appear to hold their edge with repeated usage – while not adverse to sharpening good blades, it’s gratifying to see quality material. Knife has easily replaced previous daily carry as has been the case for those gifted to special friends. Great knife!

— DD (buyer of seven knives)

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I am a proud owner of one of your custom Kershaw knives.

It is truly a gentleman knife in its sleek appearance but however once you activate the quick action it becomes a compact tactical weapon that has the bite of a jaguar.

It is a modern day sicae that every true partisan should carry!

— Comrade X

—–

Kershaw produces a fine EDC knife in the Leek; it’s light, easy to open single handed, and sharp out of the box. What I like most about my Zelman Partisans customized version is the reminder, every time I use the knife, of what TZP stands for: no compromise, no surrender.

Furthermore, each sale supports TZP and the extremely worthy mission of carrying on Aaron Zelman’s work in a form that he would undoubtedly approve. The TZP Leek would make a fine gift for like-minded individuals.

— RJ

—–

Such sharpness! I carry my TZP folder every day and have abused it enthusiastically to do everything from opening packages to scraping off old caulk. It never goes dull. Both the point and the edge are as razor-like and unblemished as the day I got it. I also like that it has two mechanisms for opening it and has both a positive lock-open and lock-closed (to keep it from opening in my pocket and stabbing me with that ultra-sharp point).

— VP

So there you have it. If that sounds good to you, please visit our store and purchase your custom Kershaw spring-assist folding knife while you can. (Several other good items there, too, including our new “Whomp the Wacky” targets.)

And remember, if you’re logged in as a three-year member you get a substantial discount on everything in the store. It’s a 10% discount for Three-Year Founding Members, 15% for Three-Year Founding PREMIUM Members.

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Target the terrible, whomp the wacky

Those long-awaited TZP targets have arrived!

target_V3_092315

Two ways to get ’em:

Download the FREE pdf and print your own targets at home or work. Here’s the place for that.

Or Buy a packet of 10 for just $5.00 postpaid from the TZP store.

And the winners are …

The targets feature quotes submitted by our faithful readers. We promised that if your submitted quote was used, you’d get a free packet of targets. So free targets will be on their way to:

Carl “Bear” Bussjaeger
Pat
J. Eric Andreasen
vorkosigan
Archer

We’ll be checking with you to see what address we should send to. And if I missed anybody, please let us know (we now have a Contact Us link; just use the About Us drop-down menu).

Thanks to all!

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Teach Your Children Well

When I was a fairly young girl my family went to see the Disney movie “Bambi”. I can still remember laying in the back of the station wagon with my sisters on the feather bed we had back there. Nope, never did care for deer meat. When I was young I remember my Dad telling me when I was done riding, you take care of your horse before you take care of yourself. Which explains why a few years ago after a “mishap” shall we say, as blood flowed down my face I unsaddled my horse, put my tack away and turned him out before I sought help. To be fair, if you haven’t priced tack, don’t scoff. What we learn in those “young” years, tends to stick and stick deeply.

I recently read a book called Please Say Kaddish For Me. I bought it when I worked a ethnic event last weekend and the author had a table there. Naturally she visited our table, Israel. We visited and she told me about her book, set in late 1800s Russia. She mentioned that she had people tell her they didn’t know what pogroms were. I had the same thing happen with something I had written, one of the people that read it said I shouldn’t use words that weren’t common. Sadly, pogroms have been common, way too common. I normally don’t have much time to read, but I could not put down the book. I started it Saturday evening, and read most of Sunday till I finished it late Sunday night. The story, the people, the time just sucked me in. I just had to find out what happened next. There were a couple parts in it that I want to bring out, one was when some of the characters talked about perhaps trying to get guns to defend themselves and the other was about the children. She made good point of talking about some of the games the children were playing in the streets, and about the children throwing rocks at some of the Jewish characters. One of the adults said it was what they had learned at home. Yes, yes indeed. It’s how people can grow up to slaughter a group of people because they have learned from a very young age that “those kind” aren’t human, they are evil, they killed Christ, and on and on. BTW, the Jews weren’t allowed to implement or pass a death sentence, only the Romans.

And that is what got me to thinking about the things I learned “when I was young” and how they have stuck with me, part of my fabric.

What are our children learning today? When I was growing up, while my parents were fairly involved but they didn’t check over my homework unless I needed help. If parents today are the same, they could be in for quite a shock.

This country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Yet in the schools while there is no room for a Torah or Bible study club to meet before or after school. Islam is being taught as part of the lessons of world history. This article is from 2013.

The textbook, called simply “World History,” contains a 32-page chapter fondly devoted to “Muslim Civilizations.” Sections include descriptions of the Koran, the growth of the Muslim empire and the Five Pillars of Islam.Now we’re getting to the truth. An entire 32 page chapter dedicated to the Koran, and the Five Pillars of Islam? This is 100 percent Islamic indoctrination presented as “history.”

But it goes further back than that, this one is from 2008, and lists incidents from all across America, not just one state. Children are taken to visit mosques and given korans, or qurans or as barry calls it, oh never mind. But the point is, there was no field trip to a Synagogue or Church, no Bibles given out.

In New York recently:

Infamous Palestinian Arab “activist” Bassem Tamimi spoke at an Ithaca, NY elementary school on Friday to present to third-graders a presentation on the “suffering” of Palestinian Arab children in Israel

You should read that article and find out how despicable that person really is. Rabid, as in bat-rabid anti-semitic in words and deeds.

The High Holy Days are over, but while the muslim talk was about not allowing Jews to “profane” the Temple Mount because of the Al-Aqsa mosque.

 

Let’s look at how much the poor palestinian youth treat their holy Al-Aqsa mosque.

This one is even better, it has captions.

It’s not about a great love for Al-Aqsa, it’s about a great hatred for Jews and Christians. Think about it, is this how other religions treat their holy sites? But they are taught from a very young age.

Do you think these lessons will stick with the children? The attitudes that have been taught to these children who graduate from throwing water balloons and stones at worshipers on the Temple Mount become the rock and Molotov cocktail throwing teenagers and far younger that attack motorists and pedestrians in Israel. And now Europe, and before long here as the asylum seekers pour in, unvetted, unscreened.

What do we teach our children? Aim small, miss small I hope, gun safety and value of life. Both theirs and others.

Mommy and Daddy, what does “pogrom” mean and where do they come from?

Please, no more.

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My long journey to TZP

The enemies of gun rights have been awfully quiet lately. Maybe that’s ominous. Maybe that means they’re Up To Something. (Well, of course they’re up to something; we can only hope that when it arrives it’ll be something typically, laughably ineffective.)

The enemies of Jews have been far from quiet lately, but we have Y.B. ben Avraham and Sheila Stokes-Begley to deal with them.

Which I admit sometimes makes me question “What am I doing here?” How did a goy with no known connection to Jews and Judaism end up helping to found an organization that’s all about Jews and the civil right to own and use firearms?

So since it’s quiet, I hope you won’t mind me taking a little ramble into the past.

It all started with Aaron Zelman (as so many things around here do). Sometime in the late 1990s, when it was far from certain that we were ever going to prevail against the victim disarmers, Aaron asked me to write for his (now late, lamented) Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. I immediately disqualified myself: “But I’m not Jewish.”

It didn’t take long to learn that Aaron’s view was much broader than I realized. Yes, as a Jew who grew up in gun-friendly Arizona and eventually became a gun dealer, Aaron conceived a special mission to join with Jews to educate other Jews about the life-saving, even culture-saving power of firearms. But it was more than that. It was a belief (later expressed in everything from books like Dial 911 and Die to the the video documentary Innocents Betrayed) that vulnerable groups and individuals everywhere have a need, a right, and even a mission to defend themselves and other vulnerable people.

No matter whether those vulnerable populations are (or were) tribal minorities, religious minorities, independent farmers in the collectivizing Soviet Union, educated people in Pol Pot’s crazy Cambodia, political targets of Mao’s insane utopianism … or Jews under attack anywhere and any time.

(Besides that, Aaron was the kind of uncompromising, tell-it-like-it-is cuss I could both identify with and respect. But that’s another issue.)

—–

I grew up in a nominally Christian home. While my parents themselves weren’t very religious, religion was a tool handy for rearing (so they hoped) obedient children. Ours was a hard religion. “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” not “Jesus loves the little children.” “Honor thy father and thy mother,” not “Love one another as I have loved you.” It was a religion of lakes of fire and eternal punishments and all the “good” people being suddenly raptured out, leaving brats (like you-know-who) parentless and alone in a hostile world if they didn’t watch their little steps and BEHAVE.

It was also — I’m sure you won’t be surprised — a religion in which Jews were “Jesus killers” and generally all-round bad people. I vividly recall my father sitting at the head of the dinner table, grousing about how those “K—s run the world.”

I didn’t actually know any Jews at the time (though I’m sure some of my schoolmates were Jewish and it was just a subject that never came up). By the time I knowingly met my first Jew, at 14, I was mildly surprised to learn they didn’t have fangs and drink the blood of infants. What do you know; regular people just like me.

But by then I was also figuring out that quite a lot of what I’d been raised with was, shall we say, exaggerated toward then negative.

As I matured, I increasingly questioned authority and identified with Outsiders, whoever and wherever they might be. And I learned the importance of self defense — not only physical defense, but also defense of the best that’s within us all — defense of the heart, mind, spirit, and intellect. I learned that ideas matter and that defending the right to think and act free of oppression is of the utmost importance, to individuals and to the fate of humanity.

—–

Recently, a new book about Hitler has come out. Black Earth by Timothy Snyder explores Hitler’s views on — of all things — nature. Snyder’s thesis is (or so I’ve seen it summed up in reviews and interviews) that Hitler believed that nature — proper nature — was inherently, necessarily savage. It was only right that the animals with the sharpest claws, and the humans with the biggest guns, and the “races” with the biggest armaments and best strategies should dominate the weak, the “unfit.” It was a savage, circular, self-reinforcing worldview. A mad worldview. But no doubt envisioning himself as the toughest beast in for global forest, he loved it. And it drove his determination to rid the world of Jews.

Snyder says:

[W]hat Hitler does is he inverts; he reverses the whole way we think about ethics, and for that matter the whole way we think about science. What Hitler says is that abstract thought — whether it’s normative or whether it’s scientific — is inherently Jewish. There is in fact no way of thinking about the world, says Hitler, which allows us to see human beings as human beings. Any idea which allows us to see each other as human beings—whether it’s a social contract; whether it’s a legal contract; whether it’s working-class solidarity; whether it’s Christianity—all these ideas come from Jews. And so for people to be people, for people to return to their essence, for them to represent their race, as Hitler sees things, you have to strip away all those ideas. And the only way to strip away all those ideas is to eradicate the Jews. And if you eradicate the Jews, then the world snaps back into what Hitler sees as its primeval, correct state: Races struggles against each other, kill each other, starve each other to death, and try and take land.

In other words, Hitler hated Jews because, educated and cultured above the average “race,” Jews were attempting to raise all of humanity above nature’s savagery — through ideas, through rational thought, through art and literature and science.

This is an oversimplification. If you want to know more, here’s an article by Snyder and an interview with him.

—–

Aaron used to love to regale me with information about the accomplishments of Jews, “We’re only X% of the population, but we make up XX% of all Nobel Prize winners. And XX% of stand-up comedians!”

Me, I’m a talentless dummy by comparison.

But I appreciate a people who want life to be something other than solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” And I weep at the tragedy that Jews have so often been targeted for hatred precisely because of the greatness within their culture — a greatness we’ve all benefited from.

So here I am, far from being either Jewish or expert in matters Jewish. Maybe I even come across to some as being silly for presuming to be here at TZP. But, thanks to Aaron (who’ll remain in my pantheon of heroes until the day I die), here I am.

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TZP polls: Help us test our newest feature

Take a look at the top of the sidebar, there on the left. We’re testing TZP’s newest feature: weekly polls.

Click on the question to answer the poll (which will open in a new tab or new window), then leave a comment to let us know how the feature worked for you. We’ll leave the current question up until Friday the 25th, collecting not only your answers but your input on the polling process. They we’ll refine our polls according to what you tell us.

Thanks for helping — and thanks for visiting and supporting TZP! While you’re here, please consider joining or shopping in our store. We have excellent custom Kershaw knives, TZP yarmulkes, and uber-cool morale patches for wearing or display.

—–

P.S. We had a delay on producing targets when our volunteer designer couldn’t complete the work. But another artist stepped in and we’re very close to announcing the targets — and the winners of the quote competition now.

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